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The Tech Week that was January 20-24 2020

Happy Chinese New Year. Let’s hope the Year of the Rat brings a recovery for the semiconductor industry. The initial signs are all good with many positive indications in the news this week, but let’s hope the Wuhan coronavirus doesn’t derail the recovery by becoming a global emergency. To all those based in China stay safe and healthy.

Here is my weekly summary of all the key semiconductor and technology news from around the world this week.

This week several major companies reported quarterly earnings, with a very optimistic message being given by all.

Texas Instruments earnings report pointed to a recovery across the IC industry. They said “most markets showed signs of stabilising” and forecast Q1 revenue midpoint of US$3.25billion. Last quarter they posted better than expected earnings of US$3.35billion, but this was still down 10% on a year ago and down 11% sequentially. As Texas Instruments have a very broad portfolio across all markets it is a good indicator of the general market so it is quite optimistic that they see the market stabilising after 5 quarters of decline.

STMicro also posted solid results for Q4 reporting revenue of US$2.75billion, up 7.9% sequentially on strong sales for low emission cars and next generation smartphones, though traditional older generation automotive products were down. The poor sales of established automotive products will also impact next quarter where they forecast up to 14% drop in sales. STM did also announce they will invest $1.5billion in 2020 direct at capital expenditure.

Intel also gave a very upbeat message at their Q4 earnings call. Intel reported that strong cloud computing demand drove revenue in Q4 to US$20.2, up 8% on Q3. For the year they reported revenue of $71.965billion, up 1.3% on 2018. For the coming year they forecast revenue to be up a further 2% at $73.5billion, with revenue in Q1 at $19billion. In addition Intel plans to spend $17 billion on capex to increase capacity to Ensure they can support customer demand and build inventory..